The FSA Spy market buzz – 1 November 2024
Battleshares’ old versus new, Goldman Sachs’ Cassandra warning, Hong Kong property’s negative equity woes, Ninety One’s trillion-dollar question, Contrarian alert from CB, Lists and much more.
At the beginning of 2018, fund selectors had high hopes for Asia-Pacific ex-Japan equities.
Respondents to FSA’s Asset Class Research in late 2017, for example, indicated strong interest for these assets. They stood out with the highest net number of potential buyers – which is calculated as a difference between the percentage of respondents who said they would add them to their allocation and the percentage who said they would reduce them in the following 12 months.
However, Asia-Pacific (ex-Japan) funds for sale in Hong Kong were among the bottom performers among regional equity products. According to FE, the category has returned -6.55% year-to-date.
China and Korea, accounting for 35% and 17% of the weighting in the index, respectively, contributed the most to the loss. Year-to-date, the MSCI China Index returned -7.71% while MSCI Korea was -9.15% in US dollar terms.
Against this backdrop, FSA talked to Andrew Daniels, Hong Kong-based senior analyst for manager research at Morningstar, for a comparative analysis between two Asia ex-Japan funds: the Blackrock Asian Dragon Fund and the First State Asian Growth Fund.
Blackrock Asian Dragon |
First State Asian Growth |
|
AUM |
$3.6bn |
$560.5m |
Inception |
March 2003 |
June 1988 |
Manager |
Andrew Swan |
Richard Jones and Alistair Thompson |
Cumulative return* |
42.16% |
22.52% |
Alpha YTD** |
-2.45 |
6.66 |
Volatility YTD** |
9.14% |
6.98% |
Morningstar analyst rating |
Bronze |
Silver |
Morningstar star rating |
*** |
**** |
FE Crown fund rating |
*** |
** |
OCF |
1.09% |
0.91% |
Battleshares’ old versus new, Goldman Sachs’ Cassandra warning, Hong Kong property’s negative equity woes, Ninety One’s trillion-dollar question, Contrarian alert from CB, Lists and much more.
Part of the Mark Allen Group.